Redbird #7 "Around the Fish"

Happy Fat Tuesday!

Hot off the press: 3rd edition of Redbird #7 Beach Swamp Travel-Log, released last year, available now. 40-page 4.5" x 5.5" mini-comic about a roadtrip I took with my wife and kid to Jackson, Mississippi, Gulf Shores, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana. Play the game "Shark or Decorated Souvenir Shed," traipse around the world's largest hydrological model, learn how to make cocktail sauce, and enjoy a big centerfold map with laffs along the way. Screenprinted covers, xeroxed interiors.

There's some good New Orleans / Mardi Gras / Fried Fish content in here.

Dan Zettwoch, Redbird #7 Back Cover, 2-color screenprint on French "fuse green" construction stock.
 I also really got into Paul Klee while working on this issue, particular his notebooks and this painting, "Around the Fish", which I covered on the back of my comic.

Paul Klee, Around the Fish, 1926. Oil + Tempera on canvas mounted on cardboard.
Of course in St. Louis Mardi Gras means: Fish Fry Season!

More greasy goodness coming on Zettwoch's Suitcase blog soon!

You See It When It Sees You!

 I love this exercise from Lynda Barry's great book MAKING COMICS called "You See It When It Sees You". 

I do it along with my students in MFA IVC every Spring. Here are the last few:

It's a fun way of combining concrete writing, still-life drawing, imaginative writing and self-portraiture, all on one sketchbook page.

Lynda's "X-Page" diary method makes for an interesting page layout, forcing us to write and draw in non-linear triangular wedges instead of the usual top-down journal method.

Toys, action figures and little tchotchkes with personality for make for good subjects, but I find that I enjoy drawing and inhabiting strange 'boring' objects better. It was fun writing from the POV of a KILZ can.

Try it yourself with an object around your house! (I have also stolen Lynda's preference for cheap composition books for my classroom planning and sketching).